In my opinion, one of the best things Facebook ever did was to let users “unfriend” each other without any notifications. There have been numerous examples where I’ve regretted “friending” someone, and I’ve avoided tons of drama thanks to this unfriend-in-secret feature. Now, there are apps and extensions that will let you monitor when people unfriend or unfollow you on Facebook or Twitter.

The procedure to figure out who is no longer friending you is quite simple: simply compare your current friends list (Facebook) and followers list (Twitter) to a previous record and look for differences. If someone is no longer friended to you or following you, then the conclusion is obvious.

If this is something that you’d like to know, then you can use the following services to track your unfrienders and unfollowers.

Unfriend Finder is a simple extension that works across all of the major browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Maxthon. It began as a Greasemonkey userscript (which you can still install) but now it’s a widely recognized unfriend tracker extension for Facebook.

Over time, Unfriend Finder will notify you of unfriends and friends who have deactivated their Facebook accounts. In addition, whenever you send out a friend request, Unfriend Finder will let you know when that person hasn’t yet accepted the request – even notifying you if they chose to ignore your request.

Like Unfriend Finder, Who Deleted Me will track changes to your friends list in Facebook. Instead of being an extension, however, it’s an app for which you need to grant Facebook permissions. Once you grant access, the tracker will update you with daily emails regarding changes (unless there were no changes).

The site has been running for just over 2 years now, and has over 100,000 users. It’s a great service if you like receiving email notices instead of browser-based notifications. One downside is that users can hide themselves from Who Deleted Me, which may result in slightly inaccurate friends tracking.

Unfortunately, TwentyFeet’s free package is a bit limited. It lets you track one free Facebook account and one free Twitter account. For additional accounts, or for YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook pages accounts, you’ll need to upgrade to Premium. Payment is done through “credits”, which can you purchase on the website.

Who Unfollowed Me is a service that tells you who unfollowed you since the last time you visited the site. All that’s required is a few simple clicks and nothing more. Not only that, but it’ll tell you who you’re following that isn’t following you back AND who’s following you that you aren’t following back.

This is great for people who don’t want regular emails or direct messages on Twitter but would prefer to check manually every once in a while. The feature set is pretty simple, though, so if you’re looking for something highly customizable and powerful, this may not fit the bill.

UnFollowers.Me is very similar to Who Unfollowed Me but with a few extra bells and whistles. Not only does it show you who unfollowed you, it has a dashboard where you can perform simple actions like following/unfollowing, blocking/unblocking, autofollowing people who follow you, sending tweets to multiple users, inviting users to follow you, and more.

You can keep yourself updated by visiting the site whenever you want, or you can set up simple email or tweet notifications over regular periods. Overall, it’s a fantastic service that is easy to use and quite useful.

JustUnfollow is a website that has a number of Twitter management tools: automatically unfollow those who don’t follow you back or users who are inactive; automatically follow fans who follow you; tracker for users who unfollow you; tracker for users who follow you; follow the users that another account follows; whitelists and blacklists for more user control.

The best part is that JustUnfollow comes in two mobile app varieties: one for Android and one for iPhone. Now you can manage your Twitter followers remotely through your phone, which is exponentially more convenient than using a traditional website dashboard!

Conclusion

In the end, knowing when someone unfriends or unfollows you can become a big burden. You may end up offended or you may feel betrayed, especially if someone you thought was a good friend does it. That’s why I personally don’t use these services. However, if you’re dying to know, then these services will help you.

Are there any other apps and extensions that track unfrienders and unfollowers that I missed? Please share them in the comments!

I was unfriended by a person who became upset when I didn't LIKE the pictures of her kids. Seriously. I found out when I tried to post something to her and couldn't so I asked her about it. What I don't understand is that she could have just as easily blocked my posts from her feed and I would have been none the wiser. But that also proves that I am more savvy when it comes to tech stuff than she and, in my opinion, kinder.

As I noted on the Facebook post, the only person who has unfriended me is my ex SIL, and that was after he called me at 3:00 a.m., ripping drunk and crying, to ask if I still loved him. Since I've known him since he was a junior in high school and he's always been an idiot, I've not lost any sleep over it LOL.

I think both points of view have merit. People DO invest far too much into their social networking, and without question share WAYYYYY too much personal info. Honestly, I don't want to know or care every time empties their bladder, voluntarily or otherwise, and I "know" one woman who literally posts "I peed!" at least every ten minutes on Facebook, and I'm sorry to say that that is not an exaggeration. Further, if you think the Sandy Hook shooting incident is a government lie and you want to see the school security tapes posted unedited online (one of her favorite themes between bathroom....or clothing change....posts, I don't want to hear about that either. Frankly, I would gladly unfriend her if she were not a neighbor of a close relative of mine and I'm not eager to set her off since she's clearly not quite uhhhh...sane?....and she claims to own multiple assault weapons, which I have no difficulty believing.

And that actually brings me to yet another reason for not investing one's entire life in a social network and perhaps still using one of these apps. There are a lot of nuts and bolts out there, and you sometimes become "connected" to them before you know their true nature and for one reason or another don't feel you can simply bow out. Getting a heads up when they unfriend you just might give you a step up on averting a possible disaster. The odds aren't enormous, but 1% is 100% if you're the 1%....or someone you love is.

I can see using something like this if you are using facebook or twitter for business marketing. If a bunch of people suddenly unfriend or unfollow you, you might want to try to figure out what you did to upset them to avoid doing so again in the future.

I agree with Bret. Why the drama and the angst?! Am I going to throw myself of a cliff because some twit "unfollowed" me? Am I going to go out and commit mayhem because some airhead "unfriended" me?! There is a 99.44% chance that I do not know these losers personally. How many times in our REAL lives have people decided they do not want to know us anymore? We got over it.

The way I see it, if people want to "unfriend" or "unfollow" me, it is their loss, not mine. Too many people get too emotionally involved in social networks.

While curiosity can stem from insecurity, it's also possible to be just plain curious. On the other hand, I agree that Facebook made unfriending a "secret" process and I'm grateful for it because I've unfriended a few people and I was glad that they weren't notified. That would've been awkward for everyone.

However, these services do exist and people do want to know how to see who unfriends them... thus, article was written.